


Lost in His Past

by ArianneMaya



Series: Aftermath [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArianneMaya/pseuds/ArianneMaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. </em><br/>Maybe the words meant something to Steve, but to him, they are hollow, empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost in His Past

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to @Eeyore9990 for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

_Your name is James Buchanan Barnes._

Maybe the words meant something to the man who said them – the target. Steve, he corrects himself a second later. He doesn’t remember the man but thinking of him as nothing but a target, someone to be found and eliminated, feels wrong. 

To him, the name is hollow, empty, just like the person he finds himself staring at in the Smithsonian. Sergeant Barnes, the man who wears his face but that he can’t ever remember being. 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. He should be at the safe house, waiting for his punishment, for the consequences of his failure. That’s how it always goes. When a mission goes south – it happened maybe once or twice in the last fifty years, and never before was it the fault of the Winter Soldier – there’s a safe house, a place he knows he should head to, where his handlers will find him later. 

But there’s a difference between failing a mission and going against a mission’s very objective. That’s exactly what he did when he pulled Steve out of the water. He lost sight of the mission from the moment Steve stopped fighting and started talking. 

Before that moment, all of his being was focused on completing his mission, on killing Steve. Then Steve spoke, and it was like the dam broke in his mind with Steve’s words, letting in a flow of images that he usually never sees unless he’s in cryo. 

All he wanted was to make it stop. He wasn’t thinking about killing Steve anymore; all that mattered was to make him stop _talking._

_I’m with you ‘til the end of the line._

He still has no idea where the hell this urge, this goddamn _need_ to protect Steve, to save his life, came from. All he knew was that he had to. Steve was still his mission, but there was no way he could let Steve die. 

So he jumped into the water, found Steve and pulled him out. He hid and waited until the people who were working with Steve found him; there was nothing he could do to help, but it felt wrong to leave without being sure that Steve was found and taken care of and that he would survive. 

After that, he found himself wandering around. He should have been heading to the safe house. The thought is still at the back of his mind, but the compulsion to follow it as if it was a direct order isn’t as strong as it once was. 

He knows he’ll have to fight that instinct. It isn’t gone. But it feels like he’s the tiniest bit more in control of his mind. Likes he’s strong enough to come to the conclusion that there is something else for him to do, something that isn’t going back to the safe house and being found and punished and put on ice. 

It’s been a long, long time since he last thought of himself as a person, so long that he can’t remember. 

He’s used to doing what he’s told. To see himself as a weapon, his metal arm the perfect extension of the rifle he uses. He could only think as far as he needed to follow orders, to see his missions through to the inevitable end. Until his existence collided with Steve’s. 

Now his mind is a jumble of thoughts that don’t make any sense. His body is a mess. His metal arm needs recalibrating. He’s experiencing hunger and tiredness for the first time in so long that he almost fainted before he understood what was happening to him. 

In the safe houses, there was always food and a bed. When he had waited for his handlers, he ate and slept, because that’s what was expected of him more than out of real necessity. It always felt like he could have gone without food or sleep. He was a machine, after all. Not a human being. 

Or so he thought. Now he doesn’t know anymore. 

So he salvaged some food from the garbage of a deli. He caught an hour or two of sleep, in Steve’s old apartment. He wasn’t even scared that Steve would walk in, not after he realized the place was still decorated with bullet holes and blood. Somehow, being there made him feel safe enough to sleep. 

He couldn’t explain why. After he woke up, he found his way to the Smithsonian, in the hope that here, he might get some answers. 

Instead, the exhibit is giving him nothing but more questions. It doesn’t explain all the images and the feelings he’s stuck with and unable to understand. The version of Bucky the museum presents is the sanitized one, transformed for consumption by the masses, so far from the reality of war that he knows it doesn’t even come close to the truth. 

Biographic details won’t help him. It doesn’t tell him who Bucky Barnes was – who _he_ was – beyond Steve Rogers’ best friend. It says very little of his time in the army as a soldier, a sniper. It hits him, then, that it wasn’t a skill that HYDRA gave him but one more thing from his previous life that they twisted for their own purpose. 

He knows that Steve himself would have answers for him, that he’d probably be happy to share. But Steve’s answers won’t help him figure out who he is. Because they would be Steve’s answers, his view of the friend he was hoping to find when they were face to face on the helicarrier. With how lost he currently is, it would be way too easy to try and mold himself to Steve’s expectations, the same way he always did with his handlers, with HYDRA. 

But that won’t help him figure out _who_ he is. He needs to find his own answers before he can accept Steve’s. 

He stares at Bucky Barnes, at this man who, without realizing it, looks at Steve Rogers like he’s the most precious person in the world, and he becomes convinced of one thing: that man isn’t him. They share the same face, they share the same past, but he can’t recognize himself in Bucky. 

The museum is right about one thing: Bucky Barnes was the only Howling Commando who gave his life in the service of his country. He died in Germany when he fell from that train. 

But he can’t identify himself with the codename of the Winter Soldier, either. The Soldier would have already headed to the safe house and would be waiting for his handlers, for his punishment. He would hate it and resent them but he would go through it because the idea that he could run away, that he didn’t have to stay there wouldn’t even cross his mind.

The Winter Soldier definitely wouldn’t be wandering around the Smithsonian in the hope that the ghosts of his past would talk to him. 

The old compulsion to respect and obey his handlers is a lot weaker than it was, even after his first encounter with Steve. Somehow, the Winter Soldier was blown to dust by the sheer strength of Steve’s will, of his belief that his friend could still be saved. 

But if he isn’t Bucky, if he isn’t the Winter Soldier…

He has no idea who he is.


End file.
